An avian definition of Nihilism.

On the other hand, Nihilism is not: Behaving like a devil-worshipping, disgusting, scurrilous cannibal, in order to show others what a brilliant and irreverent rebel one is.

Nihilism probably naturally attracts loners and people with antisocial personalities. Rejecting the pressure to conform to arbitrary social standards, based on not much more than a fear of ostracization, is one of the prerequisites. Loners self ostracize anyway, so the original threat is meaningless. Antisocial types tend to be antagonistic enough to challenge things for the sake of the challenge alone.

What do you think about Marquis de Sade? Is he a nihilist? What about the Sophists in ancient Greece?

To be perfectly honest, I havenÝt really thought about what it feels like, as much as I have been enjoying the sensation.

I don't now about 'being breathed' - but in a way, I guess you could call it that.

I'll try to describe it: It feels like a slow vibration within me. The vibration doesn't feel like me - but it doesn't feel like it's not me either - if that makes any sense?

My awarness can float freely around this vibration - and even 'see' it, or feel it in the world, in the swaying of trees, or the pulsing of traffic, or in the rythm of the way people walk. Also in the connection between the words and small movements of facial-muscles when people talk.

Words don't really do it justice - but it's real cool

It sounds a lot like the way I noticed feeling - and I identified it as being-breathed - very shortly before my experience of enlightenment. It was impossible to miss. A whole new dimension to the transparently automatic act of breathing. I would say you are right, about being on the verge of something spectacular. Here's something I discovered, unexpectedly, without which all would have been for nothing: At the very brink, when you've taken yourself as far as you feel you can go, then give it up, retire, dispense with any desire to 'get somewhere'.

Nihilism probably naturally attracts loners and people with antisocial personalities. Rejecting the pressure to conform to arbitrary social standards, based on not much more than a fear of ostracization, is one of the prerequisites. Loners self ostracize anyway, so the original threat is meaningless. Antisocial types tend to be antagonistic enough to challenge things for the sake of the challenge alone.

What do you think about Marquis de Sade? Is he a nihilist? What about the Sophists in ancient Greece?

That's a very interesting and clear view of something quite difficult to understand (for me, anyway). I was probably an unconscious Nihilist before I became whatever I am, now. But without the destructive aspect, although it could be argued that I manifested that as self-destructiveness, as in a lashing-in at myself, rather than a lashing-out at society.

I don't know anything about the Sophists, but I have an altogether too-close association with De Sade, that has been a difficult facet of my own experience.

De Sade is a good example of the character behind the revolution. Not so much for the disgusting life he led, but for the fact that he was condemned to hiding and prison only until after glorious revolution where he goes from deviant aristocrat to statesman!